If
you are interested in booking any of the comedians that are featured on this website
please email me at mullaney3@blueyonder.co.uk
and I will be happy to pass on your enquiry.

Shabana
Rehman

SCANDINAVIAN
humour has taken an unusual turn with the emergence in Oslo of a female comedian
whose routine consists of putting the boot into Islamic extremists.

There
are guffaws from the audience when Shabana Rehman appears on the stage in a burqa.
The garment is useful for scaring away children, she says, but
not very practical when you are assembling a bit of furniture from Ikea.

The
collision of Nordic social democracy with Muslim mores has seldom been a subject
for debate, let alone jokes, in politically correct Norway, whose politicians
fear accusations of stirring racial hatred when broaching immigration.

But
now Rehman, a 26-year-old of Pakistani origin, has sprung up. Her show has catapulted
her to fame as a champion of liberal Muslim women aspiring to a Scandinavian lifestyle.

Female
circumcision and the stoning of adulterous women are as much a target of her vitriolic
wit as the willingness of multiculturalists to overlook abuse of women
among Norways immigrant population. Rehman also jokes about suicide bombers
and the amputation of thieves limbs.

The
act has provoked the fury of conservative Muslims. Moderates, for their part,
are not amused by her attacks on them for failing to speak out against backward
practices. Ive received loads of hate mail, she said last week.
They tried to frighten me. They wanted to kill me. They said I had been
corrupted by western culture. They called me a whore.

Unperturbed,
Rehman posed naked in a political magazine, her body painted in the colours of
the Norwegian flag. The picture has become a symbol of the integrationist fervour
for which she is renowned in an increasingly heated debate about the extent to
which immigrants should be obliged to tailor their customs to those of Norway.

I
wanted to make it clear that even as a Muslim woman I am free to dispose of my
body as I wish, she said. I also wanted to demonstrate to Norwegians
that you can be Scandinavian even if you were born in the Punjab.

Rehmans
mockery of the mullahs involves stripping off the burqa to parade in a revealing
red cocktail dress. The routine includes fantasising about what the land
of the Vikings would be like if subjected to the sharia code of punishment.

There
would be a lot of stone-throwing in the northern part of Norway, she exclaims,
referring to the stoning prescribed by sharia for women who have illegitimate
children. On the other hand, girls, Crown Prince Haakon Magnus would still
have been single  a reference to the fact that the princes wife
had an illegitimate child from a previous relationship.

Some
of her most pointed barbs are reserved for halal hippies, Norwegian
do-gooders whose embrace of foreign cultures extends to ignoring
their worst excesses. If an Asian country dropped a nuclear bomb on Norway,
these people would run to the nearest book store to buy a book about oriental
culture, she quips.

To
her critics she is simply whipping up prejudice against an immigrant community
that has grown to 7% of the population. Yet Rehman has prompted a debate about
how traditional immigrants customs can be merged with progressive laws.
She is an important voice, says Erna Solberg, the minister responsible
for immigration. Her humour allows her to go further than others and incite
real reflection.

Beyond
her stage performances, Rehman rants in newspapers and on television about the
oppression of forced Pakistani marriages. A year ago, when a young Kurdish woman
was killed by her father for choosing to live with a Swedish man, Rehman led a
protest. A counter-demonstration was staged by a traditional Muslim womens
group that symbolically excommunicated her.

Her
four brothers and three sisters are supportive, even if they are occasionally
the butt of her jokes. In our culture brothers are supposed to be on
guard so their sisters are not dishonoured, she says on the stage. When
my sisters and I were in our teens, our brothers were two, four and six years
old and you feel sort of stupid when you are walking down the street, holding
hands with your boyfriend and this six-year-old comes along biting your boyfriends
leg, saying, Stay off my sister, you pig. 

Last
year Rehman was awarded a freedom of expression prize by a Norwegian
foundation and, trophy in hand, parodied the conventional words of thanks offered
by Oscar winners. I would like to thank the mullahs, she said, without
whom I would not have had a career.